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"....Cracking read there....finally someone in the media who's not scared to say it how it is....now will you pop up to Belfast here and have a word with Helen Carson from the Belfast telegraph??? She;s an estate agent's wet dream the rubbish she pours out each week...."

Onlinetradesmen.com, Ireland's largest accredited network for tradesmen and builders, has seen its membership surge 10pc since September, as hundreds of laid-off construction workers turn their hand to repair, maintenance and improvement (RMI) work.

The company has over 9,000 tradesmen and builders nationwide registered on its site. Fears over large-scale job losses in the construction sector have been mounting in recent months as housebuilding activity continues to decline.

Experts say the overall construction industry, which employs 288,000 people, or one in eight of the entire workforce, could see layoffs of between 20,000 and 80,000 people as the number of homes built in the country fall from about 78,000 homes in 2007 to as low as 45,000 units this year.

"The recent increase in tradesmen striking out on their own in the RMI sector will no doubt lead to more competition and the potential for reduced prices for consumers," said Ted Laverty, who is managing director of onlinetrades men.com.

"We have seen a significant number of builders, carpenters and plumbers in particular sign up in recent months."

The firm, which has processed in excess of 100,000 building and home improvement projects, worth over €1.2bn, since it was set up at the end of 2005, has found that growing competition for work has driven the use of the internet as a marketing tool in the search for work.

Looks like the journalists in the RoI are digging deeper to show the times they are a changing. Pity the BT has little in the way of credible journalism

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Good article, Doccyboy - there are rumours of developers being given to March to sell property. I suppose bankruptcy might look the better option at this stage than trying to keep your business afloat. One thing is for sure, this will be a very interesting Spring throughout the Island

1. Nobody in the solicitors’ profession is happy with the situations revealed in the practices of Mr. Lynn and Mr. Byrne.

2. It is alleged that they managed to borrow money from a substantial range of banks and building societies without furnishing proper security for the borrowings in the form of mortgages on their own property. Mr. Lynn, it appears, was building a substantial property portfolio using, it appears, those borrowings. He also had received deposits from property investors who expected to buy developed properties from him in due course. This latter business is not solicitor’s business and he would have been carrying that on his own account like any businessman.

The last time I had a property up for rent (in Swords), which was about 6 months ago, the Daft website showed about 70 other properties for let in Swords. Today there are almost 150 properties for let in Swords and I havnt received a single phone call for 5 days. Six months ago I had 5 phone calls a day.....at least !!!! Could this be due to one of the following:

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More news on dodgy solictor stuff down south involving property investing.

Army not acting against pilot

By Diarmaid Fleming

BBC News, Dublin

The Irish Army says it has not taken any action against one of its pilots who owes more than two million euro to a bank.

Captain John Mulkearns and his wife, Lorna Farrell, were ordered by the Commercial Court in Dublin to pay back 2,047,208 euros to the Bank of Ireland.

The couple were ordered to pay back the loan

The bank said they had broken a mortgage agreement by failing to register the loan on properties they owned.

The couple's solicitor was Michael Lynn, 39, who is wanted in Ireland.

He fled the country after it emerged he owed over 80m euros in loans from financial institutions raised against properties which are the subject of investigations by Garda fraud detectives.

The Commercial Court heard that Capt Mulkearns and his wife were given a loan of 2M euros in March 2006 by Bank of Ireland.

The bank said the loan was to clear existing mortgages for five properties in Ireland - three in Dublin and two in County Leitrim.

The loan was also to repay a debt of 200,000 euros owed to Mr Lynn, and to invest 493,000 euros in five apartments in Bulgaria being built by Kendar Holdings, Mr Lynn's property company.

Lawyers for Bank of Ireland said that the 2m euros mortgage given to the couple was conditional on the loan being registered over the five properties, and their home in Dublin.

The bank said the loan was never registered or secured against the properties. Lawyers said the couple were in breach of the agreement, and had not honoured the repayment instalments.

No defence was lodged by the couple, who were legally represented. The court then granted an order to Bank of Ireland for 2,047,208 euros, including interest against the pair.

Lynn is under investigation by the Garda Fraud Squad, the Law Society of Ireland, and is being sued in a multitude of court cases being taken by financial institutions looking for their money back.

The High Court has been told that Lynn raised several mortgages against single properties, failing to register the loans in breach of undertakings given to the lending banks and building societies.

Bulgaria

Legal action has been taken by the banks and building societies to get their money, while a separate High Court hearing is also underway as part of an investigation into Lynn's activities by the Law Society of Ireland.

Lynn has not been seen since failing to turn up for a High Court hearing related to this investigation in December. He is understood to be living in Portugal, but has travelled to the US and Bulgaria in recent weeks.

He has not been charged with any criminal offence, so cannot be extradited to Ireland, even though a bench warrant exists for contempt of court due to his non-appearance at hearings.

The Mayo-born solicitor racked up debts of over 80m euro but also amassed a substantial portfolio of 148 properties in Ireland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Portugal thought to be worth around 50m euro, as well as a number of development projects.

The banks are seeking sale of his portfolio to recoup their money, but multiple mortgages on single properties mean there will not be enough raised from such sales to meet all the debts.

Flying

A High Court judge described his tangled financial affairs including 154 bank accounts as like a "witches' brew".

Captain Mulkearns developed an interest in Bulgaria some years ago and was known in the expatriate business community in Sofia, from his attendance at a formal dress St Patrick's Day function at the Boyana Palace in Sofia in March 2004, attended by international diplomats, Bulgarian and expatriate business figures.

The military pilot is attached to the helicopter arm of the Irish Army Air Corps, whose duties include flying Irish President Mary McAleese, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and other Irish government ministers and VIPs.

An Irish Army spokesman said that Captain Mulkearns was not currently in a flying role at the Air Corps. It is understood that his ground role was a normal operational assignment unrelated to his financial affairs.

He is understood be the secretary of the officers' mess at the Air Corps Headquarters in Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnel near to Dublin, and is also attached to the helicopter section.

An Irish Army spokesman said that there had been no military investigation arising from Captain Mulkearns' financial affairs. These were first made public at an earlier court hearing in December.

"There is no investigation. He is not working in a flying appointment currently. The Defence Forces are currently monitoring the situation," the spokesman said.

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Just saw on the RTE news that UBS have downgraded their stock rating on 4 of the 5 major Irish banks to 'Sell' due to their heavy involvement in commercial property (no link yet).

Kind of Ironic for a bank that has lost over 10 billion dollars itself on US sub-prime investments but it does highlight just how complicit the banks were in the Irish property boom which almost certainly was a major driver behind the ueber-boom in NI.

Spin masters continue to tell us that our economic fundamentals are sound, but they keep changing the fundamentals.

The Irish property market is an out-of-control aircraft, full of petrified screaming passengers, with neither a pilot nor working controls. We abandoned our economic levers when we joined EMU in 1999.Like a doomed plane, the market can only go up and, when it stops going up, as it is doing now, it falls to earth. The severity of the fall is based on the pull of financial gravity.

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anyone not knowing....a neutron star's gravity is so strong that a tea spoonfull of matter "weighs" about 200million tonnes

200million tonnes! Thats the same amount of rain forest cut down every week to make all the for sale signs popping up everyone, or maybe it was the weight of all the VI b*llshit pumped out about house prices in the last year